Asus Radeon HD 6870 DirectCu

Asus Radeon HD 6870 DirectCU

Testbed

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
BIOSTAR TA890FXE Motherboard
4GB G-Skill Flare @ DDR3-1600
Samsung Spinpoint F1 320GB SATA II Hard Disk Drive
Asus EAH6870 DirectCu
Samsung 22x DVD+/-RW SATA
Windows 7 Home Premium x64

Temperatures & Noise

The temperatures themselves are fairly similar to the reference cooler, however what is remarkable is its considerably lower noise levels.

For a load temperature of ~79c, less than 45% fan duty speed was required. Once increased to 50% this dropped to nearer 76c. If however you have no respect for your ears (or you wear a headset) then crank the fan up to 100% for temperatures as low as 65c.

Good news all round. Finally let’s get overclocking.

Overclocking

Asus Radeon HD 6870 DirectCU

Our overclocking endeavours were somewhat successful, as we managed to increase the 6870’s operating frequencies from 915MHz / 1050MHz to 1018MHz / 1252MHz. In order to achieve this, the operating voltage had been increased to ~1.25V purely to ensure long term stability.

Despite the improved cooling performance, we deemed temperatures too high to raise GPU voltages to the levels required for a substantially higher overclock.